A blog about tabletop hobby and or strategy games, with a side order of electronic turn based goodness here and there. Now with tons of retro gaming content both electronic and tabletop. Also with 20% more self loathing douchebaggery!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Comics' Sucking, and Other Reasons We Keep Buying Junk

Over at RPG Pundit's blog (he of the entirely too angry at the completely insignificant Forge Indie Storygames fame) has a bit of a rant about the return of Bruce Wayne as Batman.

You see, in the most recent X CRISIS series DC did to get people to buy more comics they offed Batman in a way giving him a totally obvious way not to really be dead, and thus he can come back, now with a new miniseries everyone will buy just because its apparently special another character who was killed is coming back.

As if the returns of Superman, Flash, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and Captain America (Steve Rogers) among other big name comic book characters who have died and come back haven't shown us comic book characters will never, EVER stay dead as long as there is money to be made.

Nobody can stay dead because then you can't sell the character anymore. And it OMG might confuse the majority of people who don't and won't read comics anyhow.

We can't even have their worlds be believable since it might confuse people if a world where aliens constantly visit Earth and we have super science too might actually be different than ours.
Science fiction confuses people I guess. Its like most fantasy worlds all basically still being middle ages with a modern morality lens and almost zero plausibility. Like how castles still even exist given the types of monsters and magic in most fantasy worlds makes the expense and inconvenience of a castle pointless.
Heck, take Marvel. NO MORE MUTANTS (From the House of M miniseries. The Scarlet Witch having a retarded emo moment uses super magic to de-mutant most of the Marvel Universe's mutants. Except the most popular ones. Except a few that were made normal until they found a way to get their powers back anyhow.) was possibly the dumbest major thing Marvel did to its world. Since having lots of mutants mean Marvel earth is too far gone from our own and would confuse people.
Because I guess all the fascinating tales that could be told are trumped by not appeasing people WHO AREN'T GONNA READ COMICS ANYHOW. Yet the story beat of a world fearing overthrow by 200 mutants still makes sooo much sense even with government made super soldier projects, giant flying aircraft carriers, and even the odd god from myth hanging out. Not to mention sorcerers, the Devil, Count Dracula and his MOONBASE (which is totally awesome by the way. No wonder nobody bought the series this took place in. Comic fans hate buying awesome books.) , gates to other worlds where all the superheroes got turned into zombies, ect, ect.
But Marvel and DC still get all the sales in comics so they see no reason not to keep putting out their junk.

And we seem to keep buying it. And if people like me complain we are just miserable haters who should NEVER EVER say anything negative because we are hurting people's feelings who do like it, but don't have enough self esteem to enjoy it unless they think everyone else loves it too.

(Just look at RPGnet. Bash most games and you are vilified. Unless its Palladium which they have decreed open season on, yet anyone defending it is a big old fanboy trolljerk. But if you say something negative about Exalted or whatever other flavor of the week product is out you are a jerk. The Games Workshop fantards are especially annoying the second anyone dares say anything about their beloved 87 million dollars in sales company who treats its customers and retailers like garbage.)
Much like how hobby games all keep buying the same small bit of product its OUR OWN DAMNED FAULTS. If we would stop buying this crap in large enough numbers it would stop.

If the return of Bruce Wayne as Batman caused say, Batman sales to drop by 20-40% it would let them know to stop the revolving death door. If Spider Man making a deal with Mephisto had caused sales to plummet it would have sent a message.
But humanity in general are flipping consumer addicts and thus we might as well lay back, close our eyes, and think of England.

Look at all the people angry over design decisions made in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Left for Dead 2. Most of the people complaining STILL BOUGHT THE GAMES. (Though in LfD2 the biggest complainers were all but bought off by the game's developer. Ethics are overridden by free trips to play the game at the developer's studio I guess.)

And that's the biggest problem folks. People might even complain. But between the defenders of the corporation, and the complainers who buy the things they are unhappy about anyhow, it just encourages companies to keep doing it.

And they will. Do you really think prices would keep going up on everything if we stopped buying it? Do you think products would be increasingly shoddy if we still bought it? Would TV shows keep having bad plots if we kept watching?

HELL NO.

Obviously the companies would never admit they were at fault, but if we as a people throughout the world would USE the power we seem to not care about having we could do amazing things.